It's obviously not set up yet. I've got about a month before I can properly use it because I'll need to wait for concrete to dry, but I do need to mock everything up to make sure it'll fit as expected. I'll get the Outback down there tomorrow or next week, depending on how bad the weather is as well, because I do want to be able to use it to do bigger jobs on the rest of the fleet as well. Smoke 'em if you've got 'em and all that.

Hung and wired up new outlets for the LED shop lights, ripped out all the fluorescent fixtures, and wired in a 20 Amp 110v circuit for the lift.

Next week at some point, we'll be cutting out, digging, reinforcing and pouring new footers for the lift. I'll be mounting the pump onto the wall, and then I'll need to get a hydraulic hose made up to run from the pump to the diverter valve, mount the valve on the ceiling, and then I can mount the valve and hoses to the ceiling, to drop straight down to the posts from above.

I've read that bleeding the system with the valve and hoses far overhead is problematic, so I'm going to have everything on the ground to function test & bleed, and then mount everything up top.

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Turns out the concrete is basically the best part of the shop. The spec on the lift is 4" minimum thickness. Min thickness on my pad was 4.5" at the edges, 5.5 towards the middle, with steel wire reinforcement and hard pack underneath with no voids. We were very pleasantly surprised to find that. So instead of cutting and pouring, we just drilled holes for the feet, and for the full belt-and-suspenders, we epoxied the wedge anchors in. They are SOLID.

With that done, I could move on to making the last hydraulic connections and finally test the system out and bleed the air out. That was a mixed bag because I found a leak in 1 of the fittings (my fault), so I had to take that post apart and fix the fittings at the cylinder, which is a real pain but it appears to be fixed now. With everything bled, it was time for a proper test!

Ok, maybe not that proper. You'll note the hoses are all still along the ground. Next time I can get some helping hands, I'll be mounting and routing those along the ceiling so they're up and out of the way. Once THAT'S done, it'll get properly tested. I THINK I can get the Armada into the shop. I'm not sure I have enough head room to lift it any distance, but it's right at the top of the range for the lift, so if it can lift that (which I'm not really worried about) and the anchors hold (which I'm apprehensive about because...well, you don't know until you know), then it'll lift anything else we throw at it.

More coming in a few days

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Turns out the concrete is basically the best part of the shop. The spec on the lift is 4" minimum thickness. Min thickness on my pad was 4.5" at the edges, 5.5 towards the middle, with steel wire reinforcement and hard pack underneath with no voids. We were very pleasantly surprised to find that. So instead of cutting and pouring, we just drilled holes for the feet, and for the full belt-and-suspenders, we epoxied the wedge anchors in. They are SOLID.

With that done, I could move on to making the last hydraulic connections and finally test the system out and bleed the air out. That was a mixed bag because I found a leak in 1 of the fittings (my fault), so I had to take that post apart and fix the fittings at the cylinder, which is a real pain but it appears to be fixed now. With everything bled, it was time for a proper test!

Ok, maybe not that proper. You'll note the hoses are all still along the ground. Next time I can get some helping hands, I'll be mounting and routing those along the ceiling so they're up and out of the way. Once THAT'S done, it'll get properly tested. I THINK I can get the Armada into the shop. I'm not sure I have enough head room to lift it any distance, but it's right at the top of the range for the lift, so if it can lift that (which I'm not really worried about) and the anchors hold (which I'm apprehensive about because...well, you don't know until you know), then it'll lift anything else we throw at it.

More coming in a few days

Great work! Youíll wonder how you lived without it!!!

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If that's the case, it means the expense and effort (because it's been a LOT of work to get set up properly) was worth it. Sort of like a welder. That was much less of both effort and expense (not that it was cheap)... all I had to do there was learn how to install a 240v circuit and wire it in my panel haha.

Which reminds me:
I had a buddy come by this weekend because, while attempting to install bolt-in hard top brackets, sheared off 4 of the 6 bolts holding the front latches to the fiberglass top, pretty flush with the glass. For obvious reasons, we really didn't want to drill them out, but the red loctite was going to be an issue.
After a bit of hemming and hawing figuring out how we would go about it without harming the top, we decided to weld bolts to them and use a ratchet to remove them. I had to hold the sacrificial bolt with the ground clamp in order to make any kind of circuit (because you can't weld through fiberglass lol). A couple of tacks provided the heat necessary to break the loctite free, and we were able to remove all 4 bolts, with only a single bit of spatter boring a small hole through the 'headliner'.

We ran a tap through each of the holes just to clear out the rest of the loctite schmoo, but after that it was good to go

Last edited by aMaff; 12-20-2018 at 03:39 PM.

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1. The Armada will fit into the workshop. Just.
2. The lift will get the tires of the Armada off the ground and not collapse in on itself. It's rated to 6000 lbs, the Armada is just under 6000 lb curb weight, so if it'll do this with the arms just about fully extended, anything else should be no issue. SUPER stoked

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Yeah. Not really usefully (unless I need to do some light suspension work, I suppose, which might happen actually), but this is a far more useful application. Still can't get full height because of the garage door w/ the Subie, but it's way up there

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But it's at the full pull on the lift, sitting on the highest stop. I could put stands under the tires then put extensions on the pads to get it up 3 or 6" higher, but this'll be PLENTY useful
Lots of clearance to all the hard parts.

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But it's at the full pull on the lift, sitting on the highest stop. I could put stands under the tires then put extensions on the pads to get it up 3 or 6" higher, but this'll be PLENTY useful
Lots of clearance to all the hard parts.

Looks great, very nice!

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Been trying to figure out how to make a raid on Maff's garage. Lucky for him I'm back to work next week.

Been a while since my last post. Test drive went well. A few days later when I was driving to C&C on the freeway it started losing power. Pulled over to the side and she died. Sat for a minute than restarted her. The CEL was on steady but everything else was fine. Drove her back home and then began looking at anything to see if I could figure it out. Nothing presented to decided to do some datalogging. Got that all set up, on the way up my street the revs went to around 3500 and wouldn't come down. Back home it was. I was pretty disappointed in this development so she sat. I finally got my finger out a week ago and sent my log to Reverant to see if he could see anything, still waiting to hear back from him on that. I did try driving her the other day, the CEL was on but all else was fine. That is, right up until the power fell off and she died. Wouldn't restart, acted like the battery was dead so I had to get a jump and drove her home. She started right up a day or so later. At this point I am leaning towards something wrong with the battery or alternator, or maybe an iffy ground.

Today I received these pretty things:

I ordered them last week so shipping was very quick. Installation will have to wait now for a few months as I am headed to work. Same with troubleshooting the engine problem. Should be warmer then at least.